REGGIO

CALABRIA (anc.

See also:

• REGIUM (Gr. `Pi ytov: in Latin the aspirate is omitted)

Regium, q.v.)  , a town and archiepiscopal see of Calabria, Italy, capital of the province of Reggio, on the Strait of Messina, 248 M . S.S.E. from Naples by rail . Pop . (1906) 39,941 (town); 48,362 (commune) . It is the terminus of the railways from Naples along the west coast, and from Metaponto along the east coast of Calabria . The straits are here about 7 in. wide, and the distance to Messina nearly 10 m . The ferryboats to Messina therefore cross by preference from Villa S . Giovanni, 8 m . N. of Reggio, whence the distance is only 5 M . In 1894 the town suffered from an earthquake, though less severely than in 1783 . It was totally destroyed, however, by the great earthquake of December 1908; in the centre of the town about 35,000 out of 40,000 persons perished . The cathedral, which dated from the 17th century, and the ancient castle which rose above it, were wrecked .

Great damage was done by a seismic

wave following the shock . The sea front was swept away, and the level of the land hereabouts was lowered . (See further MESSINA.) with six others being imprisoned for life . The ten who were executed at Charing Cross or Tyburn, London, in October 166o, were Thomas Harrison, John Jones, Adrian Scrope, John Carew, Thomas Scot, and Gregory Clement, who had signed the death-warrant ; the preacher Hugh Peters; Francis Hacker and Daniel Axtel, who commanded the soldiers at the trial and the execution of the king; and John Cook, the solicitor who directed the prosecution . In January 1661 the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were exhumed and hanged at Tyburn, but Pride's does not appear to have been treated in this way . Of the nineteen or twenty regicides who had escaped and were living abroad, three, Sir John Barkstead, John Okey and Miles Corbet, were arrested in Holland and executed in London in April 1662; and one, John Lisle, was murdered at Lausanne . The last survivor of the regicides was probably Edmund Ludlow, who died at Vevey in 1692 . Ludlow's Memoirs, edited by C . H . Firth (Oxford, 1894), give interesting details about the regicides in exile . See also D . Masson, Life of Milton, vol. vi .

(188o), and M .

Noble, Lives of the English Regicides (1798) . (A . W .